Google Resolves Repeat-Image Problem in Search

Routine searches on Google in some cases yielded results that included a repeating image of a wrecked car and a “stop” sign in Russian.

Google

Google was hit with a disruption Tuesday where some searches yielded results that included a repeating image of what appeared to be a car crash somewhere in Russia.

The image appeared to show a photo of a badly mangled car near a sign that says “stop” in Russian. It wasn’t clear if the image was an authentic photo or altered in any way. The repeating image wasn’t affecting everyone who ran a search on Google and it wasn’t initially clear whether it was the result of a bug or a hacking attack. (It was a bug.)

On its product forums, where the issue was raised by users, a Google employee said the matter was being investigated. A spokesperson for Google later apologized for the problem with an “oops” and said it had been fixed.

The image showed up in several areas. When searching Google for “Emmys,” for example, the image was included in the cluster of news stories. Switch the filter to “images” and after a few legitimate results the crash image appeared to endlessly repeat.

People speculated on various social media forums about the cause of the problem, and whether anyone else was seeing it. The Google dashboard that monitors outages and disruptions to its apps and services showed no signs of a disruption related to the image.

Is Google image search under some type of attack? No matter what you search, you get a pic of a car crash. pic.twitter.com/QixnWhkbfh